My report was court-ordered

To support my motion for custody and visitation, I attached a couple of evaluation reports. My ex-wife's brief mainly complains that I was wrong to imply that they were court-ordered. She also complains that I paid to have these reports done.

Yes, of course I paid them. They would not work for free!

When Judge Thomas Kelly ordered one of these evaluations at a child custody trial in Mar. 25, 2005, I asked him for a clarification. Here is what he said, referring to that list of five professionals:

THE COURT: Right, with one of these these people will help me get a sense of you more than I can get from just an hour on the stand or something. These are really skilled people. They're there to help their clients. They're not there to snitch to the Court for returning fees. These people are really good. That's why they're on the list and they will have a sense of you that they can communicate back to me that might give Mother, give me the assurance that we can go right to D and get you guys back on a fifty fifty time line here. So that's what I need to see is something from those therapists, something from a co parent counselor and the counseling classes. And that's the recipe here to - for you to - get what you would want and for Mother to have what she wants, which is the peace of mind and assurance that things are going well with the kids.

It turned that only one of those five professionals was willing to do it, and I hired her. So there would be no misunderstanding, I showed her the written court order as well as a transcript of Judge Kelly's explanation. She followed the instructions precisely.

My ex-wife has been complaining about this evaluation ever since. In her brief, she says:

She was not permitted to testify, as she had obtained and read the CPS report in violation of the Court orders and the law. Furthermore, the Court pointed out that her prior 2005 report was not Court ordered. (Reporter's Transcript for the January 4, 2008 hearing, pages 1584-1595)

It is true that Cmr. Irwin Joseph refused to let her testify in 2008. The reason he gave was that her report was a couple of years old, and that she had seen the CPS testimony that was given in open court.

Cmr. Joseph's explanation did not make any sense, because a week later, he gave a decision in which he cited an even older report from a gay shrink who said that I was "unorthodox". And it is not true that my witness was accused of violating a court order. Cmr. Joseph only issued the order to seal the CPS testimony after he dismissed my witness. It was perfectly obvious that Cmr. Joseph was just inventing a phony excuse to prevent me from having a rebuttal witness.

At any rate, Cmr. Joseph did not know whether the report was court-ordered or not. He was not on the court at the time. It was Judge Kelly who issued the order. I showed Cmr. Joseph the order, but he ignored it. All he knows is that my ex-wife says that the report was not court-ordered, and he mindlessly repeats what she says.

Now we have a new judge. He probably won't even care whether the previous reports were court-ordered or not. It only mattered before because my ex-wife and Cmr. Joseph were desperate to cook up phony excuses for ignoring the report. The new judge may not be so prejudiced.

Ex-wife files another 200 pages

Yesterday the Fedex man dropped off an envelope with about 200 pages from my ex-wife. It was a copy of what she filed with the court last Thursday. That was 5 days to go about 5 miles! She probably could have just delivered it herself more easily. I think that court litigants should have to deliver documents to the other party at the same time that they are delivered to the court.

The envelope had a 16-page brief from her opposing me visiting our kids. The rest of it was exhibits. Apparently she was worried that the new judge won't review the court file and not appreciate how she has beaten me in past hearings before Cmr. Irwin Joseph.

Her brief starts:

Reports to be Stricken from the Record: Mr. AngryDad (hereinafter, "George") has filed an Order to Show Cause to compel compliance with custody recommendations contained within reports that were previously submitted to the Court and that had been dismissed by the Court as not being "Court-ordered" as well as not being in compliance with Court orders. Since George is deliberately misrepresenting the status of submitted documents for the purpose of affecting the case's outcome, I respectfully request that these reports be stricken from the record, lest they may be used to cause any further confusion and damage.

This argument does not even make any sense. If the psych report were court-ordered, then I could understand a complaint that the report did not comply with the court order. But if the report was not court-ordered, then how is it possible that the report not be in compliance with court orders? If there was no court order for the report, then there is no court order to comply with.

I had submitted a Monterey psychologist report with my papers, and my ex-wife wants that copy stricken. But she has submitted that very same report as Exhibit Q in her papers! So even if my copy of the report is stricken, the court will still have her copy of the report. She did not ask that her copy be stricken.

I am just asking for visitation with our kids. The reports all say that I should see the kids. I am not even going to bother answering most of her arguments. They are just distractions. I hope the new judge is smart enough to see thru her nonsense.

Top reasons for disliking Cmr. Joseph

Here are the my top reasons for disliking Commissioner Irwin H. Joseph.

He sent the cops to seize my kids at my home based on an out-of-court report of a CPS investigation, without waiting to learn that CPS failed to find any single act of abuse.

He said that I could not show my lawyer a document that was submitted as evidence in court without any confidentiality restrictions.

He said that setting a child's alarm clock for 7:00 on a school morning was "indicative" of child abuse.

To support a finding of abuse even though no witness could name any incident of abuse, he said, "one doesn't have to have one spectacular event easily recalled and reported in detail to be an emotional abuser."

He quoted a 4-year-old report from a gay psychologist that I am "unorthodox".

He would not let me see my kids until we got an evaluation from E. Lee, and when she refused to do it, he refused to name a replacement.

When I finally got a psychologist to do the evaluation he ordered, he refused to accept the recommendation to let me see my kids.

I got permission from him to quote CPS testify in support of my appeal, but then he found me in contempt of court for doing exactly that.

He made me pay an extra $1,000 a month in support payments because my ex-wife's new husband has a bigger mortgage than I do.

He made me pay an extra $250 a month in support to pay for my daughter's dance lessons.

He calculated guideline child support based on income my investments might earn if they had been invested differently.

He accepts court filings that do not even necessarily go to the parties in the case.

He seals part of court files so that the parties cannot even see what is in the file.

He delayed the outcome of a child custody trial for six months while he sent my ex-wife and me to get Rorschach ink-blot tests from a psychologist.

He collected some out-of-court info about my website, and then wrote a letter to my ex-wife inviting her to bring a motion for contempt of court.

He put a school psychologist letter in a confidential part of the court file that I was not allowed to see, after his assistant encourage the psychologist to write the letter.

He ordered me to pay my ex-wife all the savings during our marriage because he said that she assumed that I was making less than I was.

Wash. Times on anti-dad bias

Stephen Baskerville writes a letter to the editor of the Wash. Times newspaper:

Your Monday editorial "Anti-Dad bias," is the first substantial challenge to the divorce industry by a major newspaper and deserves to be pursued much further. This abuse of power goes far beyond media bias. The child support machinery has been expanded and perverted from a means of providing for abandoned children into a huge federal subsidy of divorce and single-parent homes. It also distorts public policy and criminalizes innocent parents.

Ostensibly created to recover welfare costs, child support enforcement on the federal level has failed and now costs taxpayers more than $3 billion annually. More seriously, it pays mothers to divorce or forgo marriage, thus creating the very problem it is supposed to alleviate.

Another letter says:

Fathers have been demonized on television as well as in society, much to the detriment of society and our nation's children. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 20 million children are now raised without a dad in the home. Also, according to the National Center for Health Statistics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over 40 percent of all new births are to unwed mothers. This is a huge scar on American society.

The net effect of the demonization of men has been devastating to society.

And another letter says:

However, I question one item in the editorial, namely, that women initiate most divorces after the age of 40. This statistic understates reality. In fact, irrespective of age, wives initiate at least twice as many divorces. One widely quoted 2000 study presented evidence that when both couples have college degrees, the percentage of divorces initiated by wives approaches 90 percent.

It appears that marriage and divorce offer greatly lopsided appeal to men and women. This puzzling situation, I believe, offers a much more fruitful area for study than new ways to persecute fathers.

Petition denied

The Calif supreme court just rejected my petition. No explanation given. It just said:

Petition for review denied
George, C.J., was absent and did not participate.

Reply to censor request

I sent this response to the court:

AngryMom has brought a motion to seal reports from Bret Johnson, Bruce Bess, and James Ritchey.

The reports are not confidential
It was AngryMom who requested these reports, and used them in open court against me. She never asked that these be sealed, nor did anyone contend that they are confidential. They were never marked confidential. The Johnson report is almost five years old, and no one ever said anything about it being confidential. The Bess report is confusingly titled “confidential psychological assessment report”, but the first sentence says that it is a “non-confidential psychological assessment”. The orders for these reports said nothing about confidentiality. The Ritchey report is just a legal brief, and is no more confidential than the pleadings or any other legal documents in this case.

AngryMom argues that she assumed that Mr. Ritchey submitted his report to the court in confidentiality. But Mr. Ritchey is a lawyer who was acting in his capacity as a court-appointed lawyer, and presumably knows how to file a brief under seal if he thought that it was appropriate. He did not. Likewise, Mr. Johnson and Mr. Bess were court-appointed, and were presumably following court instructions. They never said that their reports ought to be sealed.

AngryMom gives no reason
She does not give any reason for confidentiality, except that she assumes that the court likes it that way. My guess is that she wants to tell everyone in town that I am a crazy child abuser, and she does not want anyone to see the evidence that would contradict the stories she tells about me. She also appears to be trying to interfere with my appeal. These are not legitimate reasons for sealing records.

Fact-finding is required under Rule 2.550
Sealing records is governed by Rule 2.550, which requires express fact-finding that:
(1) There exists an overriding interest that overcomes the right of public access to the record;
(2) The overriding interest supports sealing the record;
(3) A substantial probability exists that the overriding interest will be prejudiced if the record is not sealed;
(4) The proposed sealing is narrowly tailored; and
(5) No less restrictive means exist to achieve the overriding interest.

No evidence for any of these has been presented. AngryMom has not even identified an overriding interest. This court cannot seal a report unless these conditions are met and I am given an opportunity to address any factual allegations in these five areas.

I have a free speech right to defend myself
AngryMom’s real target appears to be my blog, where I have described actions that have taken place in open court. I contend that the accusations against me were unfounded, and that I have a right to publicly argue for my innocence. I have First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. The web site at issue has the sole purpose of petitioning the government for redress of my grievances. And I have a common law right to openly rebut any evidence that is publicly presented against me in court.

My kids have been taken away from me, and given to AngryMom full-time, and yet these court-ordered reports do not support what the court has done. They do not say that 50-50 custody would be unsatisfactory, or that I have ever committed any single act of abuse, or that there is any physical abuse, sexual abuse, or child neglect. They do not say that I am associated with alcoholism, drug abuse, domestic violence, psychological disorder, or other character defect. They do not say that AngryMom is any better parent than I am, or that the kids have been harmed in any way, or that the kids have any behavior problems that are attributable to me.

Both in court and out of court, AngryMom wishes to portray me as a crazy child abuser, and to portray our kids as abused victims who had to be separated from me because of expert court opinion. Sealing these reports would only serve to permit AngryMom to spread her false and malicious story, and to cover up the truth underlying what this court has done.

The court will hear the motion on June 8.

Rumors about the commissioner's departure

People have been sending me rumors about Cmr. Irwin H. Joseph's abrupt departure from the Santa Cruz family court. I hesitate to post unverified rumors, but I think that the public has a right to know.

Cmr. Joseph is a public official. If he was suspended for bad behavior, then I think that there should have been a public announcement. One of the rumors is that Cmr. Joseph got caught having an affair with one of the family court lawyers in town. There is one female lawyer in particular who has a reputation for getting inexplicably favorable treatment from Cmr. Joseph. The court administration is covering up the reason, the story goes, because it does not want to reopen all the cases in which this female lawyer got favorable rulings from Cmr. Joseph.

There is also a story that the court clerks all hated Cmr. Joseph. He was a temperamental bully who occasionally threatened for fire them for trivial matters. They have filed written complaints about him, and reported him for unethical conduct. They are happy to get a new judge.

There is also a story that Cmr. Joseph was allowed to use to medical cover story to explain his absence. Supposedly they would have fired him altogether, but they did not have another judge to replace him, and the other judges did not want to do the extra work.

I don't know too much about Cmr. Joseph. I know that he is married, because he has mentioned his wife in court. There are a couple of female lawyers who have a reputation for getting favorable treatment in family court. Everyone says that his favoritism to certain parties is obvious.

I think that the court administration owes the public some sort of explanation. They are shuffling him into juvenile delinquency court, where I guess that he will do less damage, but the kids in that court still have a right to know whether they are getting an honorable judge.

Arab judge describes family court

A Saudi Arabian newspaper reports:

“If a person gives SR1,200 to his wife and she spends SR900 to purchase an abaya (the black gown) from a brand shop and if her husband slaps her on the face as a reaction to her action, she deserves that punishment,” said Judge Hamad Al-Razine. ...

Al-Razine also pointed out that women’s indecent behavior and use of offensive words against their husbands were some of the reasons for domestic violence in the country.

The laws are different in the Arab world. Don't try it here.

New attempt to censor this blog

My ex-wife just filed a motion to order confidentiality of some reports. She argues:

Petitioner is respectfully requesting the Court to order the confidentiality of the report associated with the court ordered child custody evaluation performed in November of 2004. ... It is assumed by Petitioner that the 2004 court appointed child custody evaluator had filed a written confidential report of his evaluation in November of 2004. This assumption is based on a study of the general practices of the Court with regards to receiving court ordered written child custody evaluation reports and the fact that the 2004 child custody evaluation report was not made available to the public by the Court concurrent and subsequent to its filing.

She is referring to a report by a gay shrink who said that I was "unorthodox". I thought that it was old history, but Cmr. Irwin Joseph quoted him twice saying that I was unorthodox when he took my kids away last year. I still don't know what was so unorthodox, as Cmr. Joseph said that setting the alarm clock for 7:00 am was representative of the charges against me. I am sure that the gay shrink is a whole lot more unorthodox than that.

She goes on:

It is assumed by Petitioner that the report associated with the 2008 report from the court appointed counsel for the minor children was submitted to the court, in confidentiality. This assumption is based on a study of the general practices of the Court with regards to receiving reports from court appointed counsel for minor children ...

The court-appointed lawyer was a local crook named James M. Ritchey. I tried to find out whether he was dismissed for incompetence, but he refuses to tell me whether he is even representing my kids. It appears that my ex-wife is assuming that Mr. Ritchey intended his report to be confidential, but that he was too stupid to figure out how to file it under seal.

My ex-wife is a lawyer, so she should also know what she is doing. My motion does not cite any facts or laws or evidence in her favor at all. She is essentially saying this:

George's blog is embarrassing to me and this court because it shows that the Commissioner had no basis for that it did. I am assuming that the court will do me another favor and cover up its misdeeds by ordering his blog to be censored. I have noticed that it is the regular practice of this court to do that.

It sounds crazy, but she did previously get Cmr. Joseph to order me to remove from this blog some CPS testimony that said that I never committed any single act of abuse. I think that he just issued the order to cover up his own bad rulings in the case, and so my ex-wife can tell people that I am a child abuser.

Local prosecutor disbarred

A reader sends this story about a local prosecutor:

SANTA CRUZ — A former Santa Cruz County prosecutor has lost his license to practice law for two years.

Reasons for George Hall Dunlap Jr.'s suspension included involvement in an ex-girlfriend's court case, falsely claiming he wasn't behind the wheel during a drunken driving accident and trying to use his position as a prosecutor to get out of a drunken driving incident involving his wife.

State Bar Court Judge Lucy Armendariz ruled Dunlap disobeyed state laws, engaged in moral turpitude and failed to inform the State Bar that two felony counts had been filed against him. ...

In an unrelated incident, Dunlap was charged with child abuse this spring.

This story sounds fishy to me. My guess is that the local prosecutors routines excuse each others' offenses on things like drunk driving. Somehow Dunlap went too far. But charging him with child abuse? I think that Dunlap embarrassed someone in the DA's offense, so they turned on him with a bogus child abuse charge.

A tough court's toughest justice

A reader sent this 2006 story about the judge heading the panel that denied my appeal:

Even in a district known for rejecting appeals by criminal defendants, Justice Patricia Bamattre-Manoukian stands apart.

In the history of the 6th District Court of Appeal, no justice has defended convictions more consistently. Bamattre-Manoukian votes for reversal only in about 1 percent of the cases she considers, a Mercury News analysis shows. In the opinions she has written, the reversal rate drops below 1 percent.

Numbers are not all that distinguish her work on the court. Repeatedly, the analysis found, Bamattre-Manoukian wrote opinions that upheld convictions in the face of significant questions of error in the proceedings. More than any other justice on this usually unanimous court, she reached conclusions that her colleagues could not support. ...

''But by God,'' Uelmen added, ''when I'm in that court, I'm saying prayers I don't get assigned to her panel.''

It is not just that Bamattre-Manoukian votes so often for convictions. Repeatedly, her opinions arouse controversy for the way she arrives at her conclusions. ...

Dissents are rare on that court -- in the 16 years she has been a member, only 59 criminal cases involved a dissent. But though Bamattre-Manoukian was a panelist on roughly half the criminal cases decided in that period, she participated in 49 of the dissent cases -- 83 percent of the total.

That is true even though the analysis established that since she joined the court, Bamattre-Manoukian has never dissented from affirming a conviction. But Bamattre-Manoukian has dissented in almost one of every five cases in which panel members voted to reverse the conviction. She wrote dissents in 10 of the 55 reversal opinions in which she participated. No other 6th District justice has dissented from a reversal more than once; most never did so.

In the 2005 case of Dave Bautista, Bamattre-Manoukian offered a dissent that seemed to ignore the facts before her.

Wow. The newspaper documents a bunch of cases where she distorted the law and the facts in order to uphold a conviction and stick someone with a long sentence.

Apparently, I had no chance in her court. My appeal was a big waste of time.

Next Elkins meeting

The California court announced:

The next Elkins Family Law Task Force meeting will take place on May 12 and 13, 2009 at the Judicial Council Conference Center of the Administrative Office of the Courts in San Francisco.

I don't know whether Junk Justice Joseph is still on the Task Force. He did not show up to the last meeting, and now that he has been abruptly removed from the family court, nobody should be listening to him.

Finally saw school shrink letter

Yesterday, I finally got to see this Nov. 23, 2007 letter from William L. Rosse:

I am a school psychologist for the Mountain Elementary School District in Soquel, California. ... http://angrydad.blogspot.com/ ... blog contains direct references and identifying information concerning you, Ms. Sally Mitchell of Child Protective Services, and other individuals, including me. Considering some of the language that is found in this blog, I felt that it would be prudent to insure that you are aware of its existence. When I contacted your office recently, Mr. Steve Carlton requested that I communicate this information to you in writing. Please feel free to contact me at the number listed above if I may be of any additional service with regard to this matter.

This blog is public, and Mr. Rosse is free to read it or complain about it. But I do object to him writing a letter to a judge about it, and marking it "confidential". It was an attempt to illegally meddle in my divorce case.

Even worse, the family court encouraged the letter and accepted it into the case file. It is a basic fact about American justice that judges are only supposed to see evidence that has been introduced by a party to case, and shown to both parties.

Will Rosse could have notified my ex-wife about the blog, and let her notify the court with notice to me. Or he could have complained to me if he thought that there was something improper about the blog. If he thought that something was illegal about the blog, he could have notified the DA, or sued me. But he did none of those things. His letter does not even allege that anything is improper about the blog.

The family court not only accepted the letter, but a family court official encouraged Mr. Rosse to write the letter. There is no excuse for that. Cmr. Joseph has admitted that it would have been improper for him to look at the blog outside of court. So why did his office collect info about the blog outside of court?

The other irregular thing was that Cmr. Joseph issued some sort of secret order to have the letter put in a special manila envelope that I was not allowed to inspect. There is nothing the slightest bit confidential about the letter, except that Mr. Rosse put the word "confidential" on it. The manila envelope has some other psychologist reports in it, such as Rorschach ink-blot analyses, but nothing that would surprise any regular readers of this blog. All of the reports had been released to my ex-wife and me, except for the Will Rosse letter.

I had asked Cmr. Joseph for permission to see the manila envelope contents a couple
of times. He said yes, but the clerk would not take my word for it. She had to call him up at home to confirm it. I had thought that Cmr. Joseph was assigned to another court, but apparently he is on some sort of extended leave of absence. I am sure that there is more to the story, but I don't know it.

Back to Commissioner Joseph

Cmr. Irwin Joseph got moved to another court, but it appears that I will have to go before him again. I filed a motion for reconsideration of one of his decision in Watsonville, and I just got notice that it has been rescheduled to be heard in another court in Santa Cruz. My guess is that since it was Cmr. Joseph who made the decision, then he is also supposed to hear the reconsideration motion. I don't expect to change his mind, but maybe I can clarify the issue for an appeal.

I hope that it is the last time I see Cmr. Joseph.

'He won't let go': Husband stalks divorce-seeking wife from his cell

A Philadelphia newspaper reports:

FOUR YEARS after her husband shot her six times, repeatedly raped her and left her bleeding on the bathroom floor for hours, Crystal Haynes says that she's being victimized by him again - in court.

Today, she is to appear in Montgomery County Family Court for the ninth time in about 18 months to try to finalize a no-fault divorce she filed in 2005.

Her ex-husband, Kendall Williams, 49, is acting as his own attorney - filing motion after motion to prevent the divorce decree - from his jail cell at SCI Smithfield, a state prison in Huntingdon, Pa., where he's serving a 17 1/2-to-35-year jail term for attempted first-degree murder in the attack.

"I can't take it anymore," said Haynes, 49, who testified against him at a 2005 preliminary hearing for attempted murder.

"How much more can I be victimized? How can he keep dragging me back to court? Why is the judge allowing this?

"Why am I being subjected to this man's control?" she asked. "I'm still terrified of him. I want to have a normal life. I want closure."

She is not under his control. He is in prison, and will not get out. She has to show up in court, but she has only been doing that since 2005. My ex-wife has kept me going to court since 2003, and there is no end in sight.

Tried to hire a lawyer

With a new family court judge in town, I decided to make another attempt to get an order to see my kids. I talked to a lawyer, explained the facts, and he said that I had a strong case.

At our second meeting, I paid him a $2000 retainer and signed a contract. I never got a copy of the contract, and had no time to read it, so I have no idea what I signed. I gave him the pertinent documents, and explained my case in greater detail. I gave him a 5-page draft of the motion I wanted him to bring to the court, along with the supporting documents.

I had another meeting with the lawyer yesterday, and I expected him to have a revised draft of the legal brief that we could finalize and submit to the court. Instead he said that he had reviewed the file, and we needed to have a talk.

He said that I would have a better case if I had actually abused my kids. Then I could be sent to counseling to make sure I don't do it again, and then get my kids back. But as it is, there is no remedy that suitably punishes me for what I did not do.

He said that he searched the file and could not find anything that I did wrong, but he said that Cmr. Irwin Joseph and CPS must have had some reason for disliking me. He can't figure out what it is, but if I won't admit to some wrongdoing then he doesn't want to help.

Then he tried to get me to admit some responsibility for Elizabeth Lee refusing to do an evaluation. I said that Ms. Lee told the court that she was unable to do the evaluation. He said that she was probably lying to the court, and was actually refusing because she didn't like my attitude. Then he said that I was lucky that she refused because she is a horrible evaluator. Jay Muccilli is a better evaluator, he said, and if only I had not described on this blog something that Muccilli did in court a couple of years ago, maybe he would be willing to do an evaluation of me.

The lawyer tried to convince me that I should welcome an evaluation from a psychologist like Muccilli. They have white middle class values just like me, he said, and Muccilli would give an honest evaluation. I asked him if he had ever heard of Muccilli giving a recommendation that went against the outcome that the court wanted. No, he had not. I really don't think that Muccilli shares my values.

The lawyer tried to get me to admit that I was a danger to my kids. I explained to him that I was not even accused of being a danger to my kids, and the court made no such finding. He said, "It is implied. Why else would Cmr. Joseph take your kids away unless you were a danger to your kids?".

He said that Cmr. Joseph did find fault with me setting the alarm clock for 7:00. He said, "That's f***ed up. You should have let them set the alarm clock for whenever they want, and maybe they would discover for themselves that 7:00 was a good time."

At this point I told him that I was not paying him for parenting advice, but to protect my legal rights. The lawyer said that I should not tell him what his job is, and that I do not have any legal rights. My kids have a legal right to see me, but I have no legal right to see them, he said. Furthermore, he said that as long as I was going to argue about my legal rights, the authorities were going to punish me for my attitude and not let me see my kids.

I was flabbergasted. A lawyer who is not willing to speak up for my legal rights is of no use to me. He said that he would refund the unused part of my retainer. I don't see why he should get to keep any of the retainer. I didn't pay him to just read the file and lecture me on how my legal position is hopeless. I paid him to bring a motion to the court. He has failed to do it.